The main exhibit hall at VMNH is the Harvest Foundation Hall of Ancient Life. There are five structural columns in the Ancient Life Hall, and these columns have cases built around them. Since the building opened we’ve used those cases for themed rotating exhibits (internally, we unimaginatively call these the ‘column case exhibits”). This week we’re opening a new exhibit in these cases called “Stories from Skeletons“.

This exhibit is a joint endeavor across almost the entire VMNH Research Division, with Paleontology, Mammology, Marine Biology/Recent Invertebrates, and Archaeology all contributing specimens and working with the Exhibits Department to generate text and graphics. We’re not limiting ourselves to vertebrate skeletons; a substantial number of invertebrate skeletons are one display, such as these bryozoan colonies:

We also have lots of examples of skeletal elements that have been repurposed by humans into tools or decorative objects:

There are sections on homology and comparative anatomy:

The paleontology portion of the exhibit is almost like a visual history of this blog. Some of the specimens on display (many for the first time) include the Saltville Castoroides: